


take me home, anime boy

by boyeater



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, M/M, they're stupid they're so stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22826152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyeater/pseuds/boyeater
Summary: Here is something to note about Donghyuck and Jaemin: though all of their friends and friends-of-friends have inexplicably,baselessly,gotten it into their heads that something is going on between the two of them, they arenotdating.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 364





	take me home, anime boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lxvenxtes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lxvenxtes/gifts).



> happiest of VERY LATE birthdays to danadia!!!!!! i am so sorry that this is so late.. it's.. 3 months? late! haha i am so bad at this. this actually isn't what i was originally going to gift to you but you know what. something is so much nicer than nothing!!!! and your original gift is... it's nowhere near done T___T but once it is. i will slap a bow on that too and you will have TWO gifts!!!! i hope you like this short little fic!!!

_Are they dating?_

Here is something to note about Donghyuck and Jaemin: though all of their friends and friends-of-friends have inexplicably, _baselessly,_ Donghyuck cuts in, gotten it into their heads that something is going on between the two of them, they are _not_ dating. 

_It looks like they are._

“No,” Donghyuck insists stubbornly, annoyance lacing his tone, scrunching his nose up in that way that Jaemin tsks at, smoothing out the wrinkles with his pointer finger. Jeno looks at them blankly, takes a sip of his water, stares at the camera like he’s in the Office, shakes his head and turns away from the conversation. Donghyuck doesn’t mind him, looking only at the underclassman that Jisung is hanging out with. The boy looks like he isn’t buying whatever Donghyuck is trying to sell him (only a simple fact, Donghyuck insists), looking between Donghyuck and Jaemin slowly, but Donghyuck continues for the sake of self-preservation. What would it make of him if word was going around that he and Jaemin are dating? They’re _not._ “Me and Jaemin aren'tdating.” 

Jaemin laughs, teasing as he listens to the conversation, smiles lazily, “Okay, now say it without crying.” 

Donghyuck turns and shoves Jaemin’s face away with a hand, snickering when Jaemin almost falls off of his stool. “Shut up, Na Jaemin.”

“And what are you going to do if I don’t?” Jaemin challenges, eyes flashing mischievously, dives into Donghyuck’s space and holds himself still. Jaemin blinks slowly, smiles slower, and Donghyuck would say the world slows too if that wasn’t the most disgusting thing he’s thought all day. Jaemin’s voice lowers, “Kiss me?” 

Donghyuck contemplates it. Only for the shock factor, of course. Imagine the look on Jaemin’s face. 

Jisung and his friend slowly back away from the scene, matching expressions of scandal on their faces, and Jeno turns back, face carefully blank, completely neutral, and he says with as much composure as he can: “For fuck’s sake, this shit is why everyone fucking thinks you’re dating, you stupid bastards.” 

(Contrary to popular belief, Jeno has a potty mouth.) 

Donghyuck wrinkles his nose.

So maybe they’re a little bolder than most. 

(Donghyuck blames it on their zodiac signs. Okay, that could work. Donghyuck is a gemini, and geminis are—Donghyuck points at the camera and blows a kiss—in a category of their own. And Jaemin is a leo. So, naturally, he’s a bastard.) 

It’s not like they’re the only ones who flirt with each other, though. It’s normal to playfully flirt with your friends, a little no homo here, a little no homo there, and no one takes it seriously. So all things considered, Donghyuck still doesn’t know why everyone thinks that he’s dating Jaemin. 

Maybe he should ask Jeno. 

Jeno looks at him like he knows what Donghyuck is thinking and he shakes his head slowly, narrowing his eyes at him the longer Donghyuck pouts and holds his hands together in pleading. Jeno crosses his arms, arching his brow, and a smile tilts his lips, face brightening and eyes scrunching up in that way that makes him look perfectly innocent and blameless no matter what he says and does. Donghyuck hisses. Jeno too is a bastard in his own right. “Jaemin, your boyfriend wants to know why everyone thinks you’re dating.”

Jaemin looks up from his phone, blinking slowly, and he tilts his head back for a moment in what looks like contemplation but is probably just Jaemin acting theatrical for no reason other than to hold attention. “It’s cause I have sparkly eyes and I look at you a lot.” 

Okay. 

> 1\. Jaemin has sparkly eyes and he looks at Donghyuck a lot. 

That’s true. 

Jaemin does, Donghyuck covers his own ears as he admits it, have very sparkly eyes. It’s like he walked out of a fucking anime or whatever the saying is. 

And he does look at Donghyuck a lot. 

Donghyuck has lost count of how many times he’s caught Jaemin’s eye from across a room. Sometimes at parties Donghyuck looks up from his drink, from the boy he’s talking to, or from the friends he’s singing and dancing with, and he catches Jaemin looking at him. It’s usually a coincidence, Donghyuck thinks. And sometimes it’s a product of Donghyuck actively looking for Jaemin, making sure he doesn’t wander off drunk off his ass and fall asleep outside in the cold, so that doesn’t really count. Jaemin usually holds eye contact for a moment, arching a brow or smiling lazily after realizing Donghyuck is looking at him, and Donghyuck sometimes blows a kiss or flashes a flirty smile back—again, Donghyuck cuts in, all in good, no homo fun. 

What do Jaemin’s sparkly eyes have to do with anything, though? And what does it matter if Jaemin looks at him a lot?

Jaemin helpfully provides: “It makes it look like I’m in love with you or something.”

Oh. 

Is that how that works?

Jaemin’s eyes glitter like fucking disco balls at all times, and because he likes to look at Donghyuck— _hold on now_ , slow down, cowboy, Jaemin laughs, I said I look at you a lot, not that I _like_ to look at you. Don’t flatter yourself. Looking at you is not one of my hobbies—it makes it look like Jaemin is looking at Donghyuck with love and warmth and whatever. 

The heart eyes are what make people think they’re dating. 

“So this is _your_ fault,” Donghyuck hisses and jabs a finger at Jaemin’s chest. “If you didn’t look at me all the time with your stupid _eyes_ , we wouldn’t have this problem.” 

Jaemin frowns, “Don’t call my eyes stupid!”

Donghyuck blows a raspberry, “Stupid.” 

Jeno looks back and forth at the two of them and he sighs.

“It’s not only my fault.” Jaemin crosses his arms, “It’s also because you’re a brat and when you’re drunk you always call for who? Oh yeah, _me_.”

Donghyuck immediately shakes his head and shoots him down. “Not true.” 

Chenle, who was sitting there silently, more concerned with his half-hour and still running game of Temple Run than Donghyuck and Jaemin’s problems, suddenly chimes in, still not looking up from his game, “Totally true.”

“Name one time that has happened.” 

Chenle glances up for half of a second, “I can name around nine times that has happened. I have video proof of four times.” 

Donghyuck’s face burns with embarrassment, adamantly avoiding Jaemin’s eyes and the winning smile on his face. Donghyuck waves Chenle off, “Please continue your game of Temple Run.” 

> 2\. Donghyuck calls for Jaemin when he’s drunk.

Donghyuck _can_ think of one time it’s happened, though. He was really drunk, so whatever, it doesn’t count, but he knows he was just really tired and he wanted Jaemin to take him home. Renjun was there, but Renjun isn’t Jaemin, and Renjun doesn’t know where Donghyuck stores his spare key, but Jaemin _does._ It’s only the right thing that Jaemin be the one to take him home. Boom. Checkmate. Logical. Donghyuck is always as smart as ever, drunk or sober.

“I still think it’s Jaemin’s fault.” 

Jaemin lolls his head to the side, looking at Donghyuck with half of a smile, “And how is _you_ calling for _me_ when you’re drunk my fault?” 

Donghyuck holds his head high, willing himself not to blush a darker shade of red, “Maybe if you didn’t actually come and take me home when I do that, I would stop doing it.”

Jaemin doesn’t look away from Donghyuck, still staring at him though he’s not talking to him, “Chenle, does that make sense?”

“Actually it kinda does.” Chenle shrugs as he swipes his thumb across his phone, the sound effects of his character collecting coins filling the silence as they all wait for him to continue, “I read something about babies in orphanages who stopped crying because they know no one was coming to care for them. If you stop coming to pick up Donghyuck hyung, he’ll stop calling for you.”

Jeno’s mouth droops downwards.

“That’s sad as fuck.” Jeno says slowly. And he sits up straight, shoulders squared, “I would care for all of those babies at once. I have so many hands for this reason.”

Jaemin nods at Jeno’s words, flashing him a thumbs up as encouragement, and his eyes land again on Donghyuck as he confirms with Chenle: “So what you’re saying is that Donghyuck is a baby.” 

“Basically.” Chenle nods. To this accusation, Donghyuck simply shrugs. So what if he’s a baby? Chenle spares Jaemin a teasing smile, “And maybe you should stop calling him baby.”

And it’s Jaemin’s turn to blush, blinking and looking at Chenle with wide eyes as he struggles to come up with something to say. “I don’t call him baby that much.” 

Jeno laughs, “Yeah, you do.” 

> 3\. Jaemin calls Donghyuck “baby”. 

The first time it happened Donghyuck choked on an ice cube and coughed up a lung, and Jaemin barely realized what he did, looking at Donghyuck like he had grown two heads when Donghyuck asked him if he was out of his mind, but after a moment, Donghyuck’s face burning like a stove, Jaemin connected the dots. (He didn’t connect shit.) (He had to test the theory just to be sure.) Jaemin simply smiled that too-wide, I’m-a-fucking-bastard smile, and he called Donghyuck “baby” again. 

At first it was only to rile Donghyuck up, but it’s become a habit now, really, more than anything. 

“Whatever,” Jaemin says, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Chenle scoffs.

Jaemin shrugs, “I call everyone baby.”

(Donghyuck doesn’t know why he’s a little disappointed by that.) 

Jeno looks at Donghyuck knowingly, too teasing for Donghyuck’s tastes, and Donghyuck sticks out his tongue at him and kicks him under the table.

(Jaemin is looking between the two of them, but he doesn’t say anything, and Donghyuck doesn’t notice.)

Donghyuck glances at Jaemin for a second, trying to read his facial expression and make sure he didn’t notice anything, but Jaemin has already looked away. 

“You two are doing that thing again.” 

They all look up as Renjun sits to Chenle’s right, shoving chips into his mouth as he watches Chenle play. 

Donghyuck blinks, “What thing?” 

Renjun doesn’t look up at them, tilting his chip bag so the crumbs fall into his mouth, chips crunching loudly in his mouth as he motions at them, “The thing where Jaemin looks at you while you’re not looking and you don’t notice, and then you look at him but he’s already looking away. You did it like thirty seconds ago.” 

Donghyuck frowns, turning to look at Jaemin for a second and facing Renjun again, “We don’t do that.” 

Renjun arches a brow, scoffing as he rolls his eyes, “You literally just did it again.” 

Donghyuck and Jaemin look at each other, eyes wide and faces a little too warm for a windy day. 

> 4\. They do whatever Renjun said they do. 

“Honestly I don’t understand why you care so much about this.” Renjun says dryly, “If you’re not dating, then you’re not dating.” 

Oh. 

Renjun is right. 

It doesn’t really matter, does it? 

So what if people think he’s dating Jaemin? 

They’re not dating. 

That’s all that matters. 

“I don’t care if people think that.” 

What? 

Donghyuck looks up, and Jaemin is already looking at him, that same lazy smile on his lips. 

(Jeno looks like he’s waited a hundred years for this very moment.) 

“You…” Donghyuck asks slowly, “You don’t care?”

Jaemin props his elbow up on the table and rests his chin on his fist, looking at Donghyuck with a small smile. “Not really.”

Donghyuck doesn’t really know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“Dating you can’t be that bad.”

Donghyuck laughs, “Is this your way of asking me out?” 

“Kinda.” 

“It sucks.” 

Jaemin’s eyes do kinda sparkle like disco balls when he looks at Donghyuck, “Is that a yes?” 

Donghyuck nods.

(“Fuck,” Chenle slams his phone on the table, “I died.”) 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/haefucker) | [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/boyeater)


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